Christian de Castries

Christian de Castries (11 August 1902-29 July 1991) was a French Army Brigadier-General during World War II and the First Indochina War, where he was notably forced to surrender at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.

Biography
Christian de Castries was born in Paris, France in 1902 to a distinguished military family, and he joined the French Army in 1926. He was captured by the Germans in 1940 during World War II and escaped in 1941 before fighting with the Free French in North Africa, Italy, southern France, and in southern Germany. In 1946, he was sent to French Indochina as a Lieutenant-Colonel, and he was wounded in Vietnam and spent a year recuperating in France before returning. In 1953, he was given command of the outpost at Dien Bien Phu, and he was promoted to Brigadier-General in 1954. That same year, the outpost was surrounded and forced to surrender after a month-long siege, and De Castries was held as a prisoner-of-war for four months until peace was agreed at Geneva. He took command of an armored division in West Germany upon his return, and he retired in 1959 after a car accident, dying in 1991.